


Banshee

by Dramatological



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Banshee Lydia Martin, Creeper Peter Hale, F/M, Lydia-centric, Post-Season/Series 02, Secrets
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-19
Updated: 2016-03-01
Packaged: 2018-05-02 08:29:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5241617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dramatological/pseuds/Dramatological
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He was the manifestation of some dark, ruthless part of her.  He was her inner demons made flesh.  He hadn't inhabited her head so much as taken over the shadows that were already there, putting a face to the devil she knew.</i>
</p><p>Lydia is still living with ghosts in her head.  And they're multiplying.  We take the world at the end of season 2 and wander in a different direction, with the Banshee as our guide.</p><p>Tags and whatnot will evolve with the story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Standard disclaimer: I don't own Teen Wolf or any of the characters. If I did, the two boring ones would not have been the stars. Just sayin.
> 
> Expect humor, expect angst, expect that I'm not even sure what I'm doing half the time.

_I am he as you are he as you are me as we are all together_  
_See how they run like pigs from a gun; see how they fly_  
_I'm crying_

Lydia opened her eyes to find Peter illuminated by a low, fat moon streaming into the window, casting him in shades of silver. He was slouched down in the chair next to her window, his hips near the edge, long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankle, fingers steepled over his chest. She wasn't surprised to see him. Indeed, Lydia was only surprised when she didn't see him. Of course he was there, he was always there, he would always be there, and sometimes it seems he always was. Even in the days before, before his resurrection, before his manipulation, before his invasion, his death, his bite.

He was the manifestation of some dark, ruthless part of her. He was her inner demons made flesh. He hadn't inhabited her head so much as taken over the shadows that were already there, putting a face to the devil she knew. Not that she'd ever admit that, or even acknowledge the idea outside of the deepest recesses of her psyche, but it festered there, the implication that some corruption inside her had invited him, had welcomed a like mind.

He didn't say anything, his chin lifting a fraction, his eyes narrowing, a recognition of her wakefulness, but little else. What he wanted from her, now, weeks after his rebirth and assumed vacating of her mind, if in fact he wanted anything other than to torment her, she didn't know, and he didn't say.

Nor, of course, did she ask. Rather, she relaxed into the relative quiet. He was there, but he wasn't seducing her, he wasn't threatening her, he wasn't manipulating her, and just at the moment, that seemed like enough. She stared back at him, her eyes blinking languidly in her somnolence.

Minutes ticked by slowly before Lydia drifted back to sleep, secure in the knowledge that Peter was there. Life may not be just, or righteous, or good, or fair, but at least it was predictable. And there was a sort of peace to that.

In the morning, the chair was empty, the cushion cool to the touch, the little throw pillow untouched. Not the real Peter. Maybe. She hadn't quite learned to tell them apart. She wasn't even sure that she'd seen the real Peter since he'd crawled out of that hole in the floor. The only thing she knew was that no one else saw him, and therefore, he was in her head. Still in her head.

No one else saw him, no one else knew she was still seeing him, no one had even asked. Lydia was content for it to stay that way. She was handling it, and would continue to do so for the rest of her life if needed. Mental patients rarely won Fields Medals.

A quick shower, dressing carefully in the meticulously chosen outfit for the day. Her hair dried and curled, her shoes checked for scuffs, her stockings fitted just so… She settled at her vanity and looked at herself in the mirror. Without makeup, she looked young, wide-eyed, vulnerable in a way that repulsed her. Lydia Martin was many things, but a victim would never be one of them.

Her jawline widened as she clenched her teeth, opening the drawer and laying out the tools of her morning trade before she started the daily work of mask making. Concealer to cover the dark circles from lack of sleep, painstaking highlights to hide the hollowness of her cheeks. Peter watched her in the mirror, standing behind her, his muscular arms crossed over his chest, smiling in approval at her choice of lip color.

He leaned against the counter top, back-lit from the morning sun rising behind him, watching as she ate breakfast. He was waiting for her, in the passenger side of her car, his eyes following the houses that slid past outside. He stalked the hallways of school, lurked at the edges of the lunchroom, creeped through the locker room after gym. He was every movement in the corner of her eye, every shadow glimpsed from a distance, every whisper of movement heard from around the corner.

He was the ghost of a smirk in the corner of her mind every time she put on a fake, but oh-so-beautifully brilliant smile.


	2. Summer Plans

She'd had plans for summer. Back, before her boyfriend had turned out to be a kanima. Then died. Then was brought back through what the others claimed was true love but she was sure had to have a more scientific explanation. Then, of course, moved half a world away, and now sent her a dwindling supply of postcards with a dwindling supply of words on each.

She flipped the latest over to read the two measly words written on the back -- Miss you! It wasn't even signed. She dumped it with all the other junk mail on the kitchen counter and stepped out of her heels before emptying her school bag of all the things she'd cleaned out from her locker and left to sit next to the table for a week.

She was sure she'd had plans. She always had plans. She just couldn't remember what they had been at the moment, and couldn't manage to string together the motivation to care. She'd forgotten to turn in her math book, and she set it on the table in the hopes of reminding herself to do that at some point. Her fingernails trailed over the top, tracing the equations in fancy script that were meant to make math look fun and exciting.

Math didn't need to be fun and exciting, it just needed to make absolute sense, and it did. It all added up neatly, unlike anything else in her life, recently.

Her reverie was interrupted by her cell phone. She furrowed her brows at it, but it didn't go away. Finally, she picked up.

"Hey, Lyds…" Stiles had that hesitant, vaguely anxious sound he got when he was about to ask her to do something. She pursed her lips and started getting her heels back on.

"What's happened, now?"

"Happened? No, no, nothing's happened just…" He trailed off, then there was a muffled clothing sound as he held the phone to his chest and hissed at someone in the background, "Dude, it's Lydia Martin, she does not want to search the woods for a couple of missing wolves."

Lydia tilted her head, stepping back out of her heels and turning to climb the stairs to her room and find some flats. She didn't interrupt the continued hissed argument between Stiles and whoever else he was with. Truth be told, she did not want to help Derek find his betas. But she had sort of assaulted him, then found his little wolf lair, and perhaps she owed him some forest trampling. A small bit. Maybe just stay on the paths… She could supervise.

"Stiles?" The hissing continued, "Stiles!"

"Dude, shut up!" more muffled clothing sounds, "Lyds! Sorry, just…" Scuffling, a soft grunt from Stiles.

Lydia sighed under her breath and checked her watch, "Where are we meeting?"

There was a pause before Stiles cleared his throat, uncertain, "Uh… The old Hale House?"

"Give me half an hour," she replied before ending the call and tossing the phone on the bed. She opened the closet and took a step back, considering the rows of neatly hung clothing, "Perhaps a nice jumper?" She reached in and pulled out a red number, holding it to her chest and turning around to show Peter, who was lounging in her bed, his back against the headboard and his legs crossed in front of him.

Her own personal hallucination nodded approvingly.


	3. Caught in the Woods

"Here, puppy, puppy, puppy," Lydia murmured to herself under her breath. Turning around to scan the underbrush. In the distance she could hear a couple of familiar howls, and one bull crashing about the china shop. That had to be Stiles -- graceful was not his biggest trait.

Twilight was coming, the sky shading over with a dark purple-pink fading into blue-black. The humans in the group had barely covered a third of the preserve, but the wolves surely had managed to range farther than that. There was little else to do, at this point -- Boyd and Erica were just gone.

She pursed her lips and turned back towards the Hale house, taking a breath and stuffing her hands into the pockets of her light jacket. "Shall we?"

Peter slid into step next to her at her quiet words -- no sense in the others realizing she talked to the voices in her head. That just never worked out well.

They walked in companionable silence while she slitted her eyes at the setting sun and lifted her chin into the cool evening breeze, taking a deep breath of loamy earth and unidentified flowers. Stiles could be heard somewhere to the right, muttering about something shortly before taking another tumble. If he got out of the forest with his clothing intact, it would be a miracle.

With a roll of her eyes she changed directions and carefully pushed into the undergrowth towards where she could still hear him, struggling now, tangled in something. The sound of cloth tearing and a soft curse. She moved faster, lest Stiles really be naked when she found him and pulled a branch up, ducking under it and skirting past a large tree, then slogging through a pile of autumn leaves still left from last year.

Stiles had managed, somehow, to get the back of his flannel attached to a branch, the leg of his jeans tangled in a bush, and if she wasn't mistaken, a small metal cage on one foot.

"Lydia! Thank god, I don't know what happened, I was just checking out a…" He trailed off, ceasing all struggles as he stared at her. A moment passed, a bare moment before he swallowed, "Uh, Lyds? What're you doing? Are you okay? Can you hear me? Lydia! It's me! Stiles! Your friend!"

Lydia arched a brow at that, "I'm beginning to wonder, honestly…"

Stiles switched gear into confusion, "You're not crazy?"

"If I get the urge to knock Derek over the head and drag him off, again, you'll be the first to know."

He pointed, "Then why is he here?"

Lydia turned to look behind her, but no one was there besides Pet… Oh.

_Oh._

The werewolf furrowed his brows at her and her veins went cold. _I am not crazy. I am not crazy._ She was so incredibly crazy. She swallowed the scream that was hovering at the edge of her throat and turned back around to look at Stiles. A pause, panic riding near the surface. She shrugged, "Do I look like his keeper?"

"Wondering who's trampling around the preserve making such a horrible racket," Peter said in a soft spoken tone. His overtly reasonable tone that made Lydia's spine want to crawl up out of her throat and flee. He stepped up next to Lydia, looking her over with narrowed eyes before he switched his attention back to Stiles, "Now that I know, it was obvious, of course."

"Yeah, well…" Stiles lifted a hand before he jerked on the leg caught in the thorny bush and thought better of pissing the man off. Instead, he turned on Lydia again, "But why are you _with_ him?"

She wanted to protest, that she hadn't been, that she would never… And yet, she would, and she knew it, and Stiles had seen it. She blinked her too-wide eyes at him and feigned nonchalance, "What's he gonna do? Die again?"


	4. Secrets and Lies

"This is your idea of help? The girl who used me to resurrect my psychotic uncle?" Derek's eyes swept past Scott and Stiles to land on Lydia, "Thank you, by the way."

Lydia arched a brow but didn't answer him. She didn't need to, when Stiles leapt to her defense, "And you set your whole pack on her on a hunch, I think you guys are even."

Peter didn't say anything, either, standing, arms crossed just to one side of Derek looking for all the world like a valued advisor to a rather inept king. Lydia was doing her best to ignore him, but she worried that she was _not_ looking at him so intently that it only pointed out that she wasn't. The entire evening was becoming more complicated by the second. Peter was real. Had he been real the whole time? He couldn't have been, she was the only one who had seen him. What was the difference? How could she tell if there was one? Did he know? Did he see her sleeping and dressing and eating like she saw him watching, always watching?

"I've got better things to do than catch your little lost cubs, anyway," she finally put in, more for appearances sake than because she cared about this argument with the alpha. Just because the group had finally graciously let her in on all the big secrets she had needed to know didn't mean she was entirely ready to forgive them for keeping it from her in the first place. She pinned Stiles with a narrow-eyed look and spun on one heel, heading back towards her car, parked down the path just past the first row of trees.

"She's on our side, now, Derek," Scott was saying, drenched in the earnestness that made it difficult to hate him, even when he really needed it. If Derek responded, she didn't hear it underneath Stiles jumping in on top of Scott. It was almost sweet, the way Stiles had thrown himself into trying to include her, after all the time spent keeping her out. Almost.

She pulled her keys out of her pocket and found her buttons, clicking the locks on the door and getting it half open before a large hand shoved it closed again. Lydia gasped, jerking her hand back from the handle and spinning around to find herself lips to lashes with the psychotic uncle. She pushed back into the car and slid to the left before he trapped her on that side with his other arm.

"You're afraid of me," he said, leaning back and tucking his chin against his chest so he could look her in the eyes from under his brows.

"I can't imagine why," she retorted, pumping haughtiness into her voice in a gambit to cover the fact that her heart was climbing up her throat.

"Don't get me wrong," he continued, shrugging his shoulders, "That's absolutely understandable and quite the smart decision on your part, but the thing is…" He ran his tongue over one canine, as if uncertain how to phrase a delicate matter for her delicate sensitivities, "You're only afraid when other people mention you should be."

Lydia felt her eyes going wide and jerked her head back to look away. There was no way she was going to let him see that vulnerable, little girl lost look that she knew she was wearing. She clenched her jaw and answered him between her teeth, "Don't be absurd."

Peter actually smiled at that, huffing a short laugh, "Ah ah," he admonished, "You should know you can't lie to me. I can hear your heart." He pressed closer, his head weaving to one side, snake like, making a show of running the tip of his nose over her bare shoulder, "And smell fear," he added, his voice husky. A beat before he pulled away again, "So, you see, I know. I know there was no fear. You weren't even surprised to see me. Until later."

"Delayed reaction," Lydia forced out, staring hard at the trunk of a tree behind the man's left shoulder. It took every shred of her not inconsiderable will to refuse any reaction to his provocations, ice fair dripped from her pores.

The man was silent for a long time, staring at her, tilting his head to one side, his gaze tracing her eyes, her jaw, the line of one tendon standing out against her neck. As minutes passed and she refused to answer, or even acknowledge his continued presence, he made a soft sound in his throat. A sigh, perhaps, or a huff of frustration, possibly even a laugh, "I do love a mystery, Lydia. So play your cards close," He tapped a fingertip against her chin, "For now."

He glanced back at the house, then pulled away from her just as Stiles called out, "Lydia! Wait up!"

Her fingers clamped hard around her keys, her head jerking to look back at the boy, jogging down the path towards her. She looked back, but Peter had stepped into the twilight of the treeline, out of sight to anyone but her. He held a finger to his lips. _Our little secret,_ his eyes promised.


End file.
